‘Lucky Irani Circus’ unlucky for kids as child labour is at its zenith

Anum and many others engulfed by the menace are deprived of basic education

Our country is not short of the innocent children who are being exploited under one pretext or the other. They had to work in different factories, shops, service stations and are hired by the businessmen who give a meagre amount to their poor parents and then exploit these children for good.

Children are innocent and do not have awareness to judge or think about their future but only elders can provide guidance to innocent children to continue on the right path but these innocent souls are being made the victim of child labour by their own near and dear ones for just a small amount.

Anum, 8 is one such child who is being used by her own uncle while presenting various dangerous and adventurous tricks in front of hundreds of viewers on the stage in ‘Lucky Irani Circus’. She performs different gymnastic stunts spinning in the air while hanging from the roof, spinning in the circle inside the iron ring and other dangerous acts.

She says that she belongs to Buraywala and she has been doing it for the last three years while her uncle has given her training of gymnastic. She performs every stunt of gymnastic fabulously and she has a lot of talent. She can do wonders if she is showed the face of school.

She said, “I have been doing this for the last 3 years and my ancestors have been doing it for the last 45 years. I have neither gone to school nor do I want to go to school but here in camp I get basic Islamic education along with other children like me. And we don’t have any proper place where to live forever but we move and travel from place to place for performing different events while entertaining people with unimaginable and risky tricks, playing with ourselves.”

She further said, “I do not have anything in my mind to pursue in the future except entertaining and surprising people while performing to them in different places.”

Showing gymnastic stunts and employing children at a circus is not a bad practice in itself but when it is done at the cost of essential education which is the basic right of every human being, it should be reconsidered. Anum, being an eight-year-old girl is too young to understand the way she has been cruelly brain-washed and trained to happily burn in the eternal fire of child labour depriving her from the right of getting herself educated.